


The Things We Lost In The Fire

by QueenieRose53001



Series: all that i have, all that i need [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi - Fandom, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Destruction, Destruction of the Jedi Academy, Fire, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Kylo Ren and Rey Are Related, Minor Character Death, Post-Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, Pre-Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Watch Luke Skywalker suffer and lose everything he holds dear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-10
Updated: 2017-10-10
Packaged: 2019-01-15 15:51:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12324111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenieRose53001/pseuds/QueenieRose53001
Summary: Luke watches his world fall apart





	The Things We Lost In The Fire

**Author's Note:**

> I watched The Last Jedi trailer and immediately needed to write this. There was one scene in particular that inspired this, see if you can spot it.  
> Also I am doing some rewrites for chapters of the other fics.  
> Enjoy!

Everything seemed to end in fire with his family. His father had the light burned from him. His aunt and uncle were set alight, with their homestead, when he was nineteen. His sister’s adoptive family died in a fiery explosion. He had been the one to cremate his father. Everything always ended in fire. He would reflect on this later, alone, surrounded by water. 

Luke’s school was burning. They had gotten there too late, jumping into hyperspace as soon as Luke felt the first signs of pain. His students, all of them, there was no sign of them. He sent Chewbacca, Han, and Leia to go back to Coruscant to bring help. He would busy himself with finding his students.  

The smoke filled his lungs as he ran towards the ruin. He coughed, calling out names that he hoped he’d hear the voices that belonged to them in response. He knew he was hoping in vain. 

It was selfish of him to think, but he really only needed to find one of them, a precious little girl who was hardly older than a toddler, his flesh and blood. 

“Padmé!” Luke choked on his daughter’s name. He and Wedge named her after royalty of long ago. After family. “Padmé, please answer me!”

Luke tripped over something soft. He hit the ground hard, and the rain soaked soil caught him with no forgiveness. Luke’s curiosity overtook him, and he turned to see what had made him fall.  

“Oh, Iatuos. I was too late for you.”

His student’s body was sprawled on the ground, a burnt hole steaming through her chest. Her hand was closed tightly around her lightsaber, and her eyes were still open. Luke swore.

Luke picked himself up, the synthskin on his prosthetic hand too sensitive to the heat. He had been fidgeting with the settings as he came back. He never got to finish the calibration. With his flesh hand, he reached down and shut her eyes. He kept moving.

All he found was more smoke and bodies. His students, young adults and children he’d spent the last ten years training, were all dead. These were children. He almost considered them his own. His warning to his sister about her son was echoing in his head. 

“I see our father in him. There is too much anger.” Had it really only been two days ago that he had met with Leia about Ben? If only they had noticed sooner. 

“Paddie!” Luke yelled again. He ducked into a building that had once been a dormitory. It was beginning to crumble, and Luke watched as his work turned to ash. 

Then a figure stepped through the rubble. Luke sighed as he recognized his nephew, even with the fear that he had turned to the Dark Side. 

“Ben! Where’s Padmé?” Luke said, reaching for his lightsaber, the green one he had recovered before fleeing the second Death Star. He didn’t activate it, not yet. 

Ben looked his uncle in the eye. The firelight cast a yellow sheen over his face, turning his irises the color of the flame. “She is safe.”

Luke growled. “Where is my daughter, Ben?” The lightsaber ignited, and Ben barely had enough time to let his crackle to life. It was new, based off an ancient design with cross guards. 

And red. Ben’s lightsaber was red. The Siths’ color. Luke swore again. They dueled. Luke remembered, all those years ago, the fight with his own father, the colors of the blades, the fear that coursed through him, the threat of death and betrayal. And here he was, fighting the same fight, even after a decade and a half of peace. 

The smell of ozone and smoke flooded their lungs, making it harder and harder for Luke to breathe. Luke cut down a beam that hadn’t been touched by the flames yet. As it came down, it scratched down Ben’s face, leaving a mark that looked, ironically, like Anakin Skywalker’s scar.

“Ben! What are you doing?” Luke yelled, over the roar of the fire and the blades.

“What I must. What I was told.” Ben said cryptically. Luke blocked his swing, and moved back to strike. It scared him that he wasn’t holding back, and Ben was matching him blow for blow.

“Where is your cousin?” Luke asked again, because he was going to find his only daughter and protect her, even if he was going to die trying. Ben parried Luke’s blow. Luke wished that he hadn’t trained him to fight. 

“She is safe, where the Dark cannot touch her.” Ben said. 

“Ben Solo, drop your weapon!” Luke tried to get through to the boy. “Your parents are on their way with reinforcements.”

“My name is not Ben Solo any longer.” He said, using the Force and pulling the lightsaber from Luke’s grasp. “My name is Kylo Ren.”

Luke backed away from his nephew. Ben, no, Kylo extinguished his lightsaber, crude in construction but flawless in execution, and reached out with a gloved hand. “Join me, Uncle, and we will both survive.”

Luke opened his mouth, flabbergasted. “You do know that I spent my life building this, Kylo?” The name tasted sour. “I fought in the Galactic Civil War, so the Dark Side and the tyranny of the Empire would not control me or my family. My father turned against the Emperor, Kylo. You really want to follow your grandfather? He would want you to put down the saber.”

Kylo shook his head. “I do not follow Anakin Skywalker. I follow the First Order. I follow Supreme Leader Snoke. Uncle, join me, and I do not have to kill you.” Kylo said, and Luke felt the horror flood down his spine.

“Where is Rey?” His voice began to shake. “Where is my daughter? You killed her, didn’t you?”

Kylo didn’t answer the question. “Are you going to join me, or not?”

“No. I would not join sixteen years ago, I will not join the Dark Side now. Tell me where my daughter is before I make you tell me!” Luke snarled. “I don’t want to do this to you, Ben!”

“I’m sorry, Uncle,” Kylo said, turning around and giving his hand a wave. Kylo ran as the flaming structure, barely standing, came crashing down around them. Luke covered his head, the cacophony cresting and settling. 

Luke tried to fight his way to the surface. The wood was all on fire, and Luke barely had enough sense to bring oxygen to his lungs. The space was too tight, and Luke fought and fought to free himself. 

And then his hand caught on fire. He brushed up too close to a piece of rubble that ignited the flammable synthskin. There was no way to put it out. Luke screamed. The sensitivity of the synthetic nerves was turned all the way up. 

Was this how his father felt, all those years before on Mustafar? But Luke held no anger for the boy who put him here. Only anger for those who threatened his daughter, murdered his students, and who corrupted his nephew and his friends. Luke felt mostly fear. And pain. 

The smell of melting plastic and wood smoke filled his mouth, more acidic than the ozone from the sabers. Luke fought to shift the rubble and then finally, finally, he came up for cleaner air. 

The metal hand was the first part of him to become free. Luke didn’t feel it, as there was no longer any sensation. It would take years for Luke to learn how to function with a hand that couldn’t feel. 

But then he stuck out another arm, and he was pulling himself out of the ruin and away from the fire. He pulled his singed cloak around him and he looked around. The main hall was completely eaten away by the flames. There was no hope for anyone still inside. 

A droid came wheeling out of the main hall. Luke sighed in relief as R2 D2 found him, whistling and screeching in Binary. 

“I don’t know where she is, R2.” Luke said, falling to his knees. “I don’t know where Paddie is.”

Luke watched his world burn around him. The smoke swirled in the night sky, obscuring the night sky and this planet’s three moons. 

And then he thought of the consequences. Of Wedge’s face when Luke would tell him that he didn’t know if their daughter was alive. Of having to tell Leia that he was right, again. That the son of his sister and his best friend was responsible for this. Of the hundreds of parents who trusted him with their children, who were all dead now. 

Wedge was off on some Core World. Leia and Han would most likely bring him with them. Luke couldn’t bear the thought of confronting his husband. Not when he didn’t know where Padmé was. Before their daughter was born, Wedge had spent years exploring the planets that no one wanted to settle in the Old Republic, or exploit in the Empire. 

There was one in specific that Luke thought of. Covered in water, hundreds of islands, no sentient beings inhabiting it. He could hide. 

He knew the thought was selfish, but once he got R2 to project the star map, there was no stopping the urge to go. Luke sent a copy of a portion of a map to an old friend, one not obviously connected to the Skywalker family. He told R2 that he was going to shut him down into low power mode and wasn’t going to wake up until it was safe for Luke’s family to find him. 

Luke didn’t like the thought of a Supreme Leader Snoke, whoever it was. It had corrupted his nephew, a good boy. Ben had been such a good child, despite the obsession with his maternal grandfather.

Luke thought about leaving a note, and the thought upset him, but he decided it would be better to let his family know that he was alive, just not willing to see what happened next. He told his husband not to worry, told his sister not to blame herself, told his best friend to take care of his family while he was gone. He ejected the recorded holo that R2 had made for him and left it on top of the droid.

“Good night, R2,” Luke said, finally letting his emotions wash over him. The lump in his throat grew. “You have been a good companion. I don’t know how many times you saved our lives. Thank you. I will see you as soon as it’s safe.”

The droid’s lights faded when Luke put his metal hand on R2’s dome. Luke choked, this time not on the smoke in the air, but on the lump in his throat and the salt water that dripped down his face. 

He stood, and as dawn started to shed its light on the monstrosities that happened here, Luke made his way to his X-Wing.


End file.
